Thoughts on books, reading and publishing from the staff and friends of the Tattered Cover Book Store.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

People, Places, and Times

Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones
is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best
reportage—a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd
cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his
work.

Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and
the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the
United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in
these two very different regions. This unusual perspective distinguishes
Strange Stones, which showcases Hessler’s unmatched range as a
storyteller. “Wild Flavor” invites readers along on a taste test
between two rat restaurants in South China. One story profiles Yao Ming,
basketball star and China’s most beloved export, another David
Spindler, an obsessive and passionate historian of the Great Wall. In
“Dr. Don,” Hessler writes movingly about a small-town pharmacist and his
relationship with the people he serves.

While Hessler’s subjects and locations vary, subtle but deeply important
thematic links bind these pieces—the strength of local traditions, the
surprising overlap between apparently opposing cultures, and the
powerful lessons drawn from individuals who straddle different worlds. (This book comes out on 5/7/13)

Pete Jordan, author of the wildly popular Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States,
is back with a memoir that tells the story of his love affair with
Amsterdam, the city of bikes, all the while unfolding an unknown history
of the city's cycling, from the craze of the 1890s, through the Nazi
occupation, to the bike-centric culture adored by the world today

Pete never planned to stay long in Amsterdam, just a semester. But he
quickly falls in love with the city and soon his wife, Amy Joy, joins
him. Together they explore every inch of their new home on two wheels,
their rides a respite from the struggles that come with starting a new
life in a new country.

On the morning of June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his
wife, Sophie Chotek, arrived at Sarajevo railway station, Europe was at
peace. Thirty-seven days later, it was at war. The conflict that
resulted would kill more than fifteen million people, destroy three
empires, and permanently alter world history.
The Sleepwalkers reveals in gripping detail how the crisis
leading to World War I unfolded. Drawing on fresh sources, it traces the
paths to war in a minute-by-minute, action-packed narrative that cuts
among the key decision centers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris,
London, and Belgrade. Distinguished historian Christopher Clark
examines the decades of history that informed the events of 1914 and
details the mutual misunderstandings and unintended signals that drove
the crisis forward in a few short weeks.

How did the Balkans—a peripheral region far from Europe's centers of
power and wealth—come to be the center of a drama of such magnitude? How
had European nations organized themselves into opposing alliances, and
how did these nations manage to carry out foreign policy as a result?
Clark reveals a Europe racked by chronic problems—a fractured world of
instability and militancy that was, fatefully, saddled with a
conspicuously ineffectual set of political leaders. These rulers, who
prided themselves on their modernity and rationalism, stumbled through
crisis after crisis and finally convinced themselves that war was the
only answer.

Meticulously researched and masterfully written, The Sleepwalkers is a magisterial account of one of the most compelling dramas of modern times.

A lively anecdotal history of Greenwich Village, the prodigiously influential
and infamous New York City neighborhood, from the 1600s to the present

The most famous neighborhood in the world, Greenwich Village has been
home to outcasts of diverse persuasions—from "half-free" Africans to
working-class immigrants, from artists to politicians—for almost four
hundred years.
In his magisterial new book, cultural commentator John Strausbaugh
weaves an absorbing narrative history of the Village, a tapestry that
unrolls from its origins as a rural frontier of New Amsterdam in the
1600s through its long reign as the Left Bank of America in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from its seat as the epicenter of
the gay rights movement to its current status as an affluent bedroom
community and tourist magnet.

Strausbaugh—"a particularly gifted chronicler of New Yorkiana" (Atlantic Monthly)—traces
the Village's role as a culture engine, a bastion of tolerance,
freedom, creativity, and activism that has spurred cultural change on a
national, and sometimes even international, scale. He brings to life the
long line of famous nonconformists who have collided there,
collaborating, fusing and feuding, developing the ideas and creating the
art that forever altered societal norms. In these pages, geniuses are
made and destroyed, careers are launched, and revolutions are born. Poe,
Whitman, Cather, Baldwin, Kerouac, Mailer, Ginsberg, O'Neill, Pollock,
La Guardia, Koch, Hendrix, and Dylan all come together across the ages,
at a cultural crossroads the likes of which we may never see again.

From Dutch farmers and Washington Square patricians to slaves and
bohemians, from Prohibition-era speakeasies to Stonewall, from Abstract
Expressionism to AIDS, and from the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to today's
upscale condos and four-star restaurants, the connecting narratives of The Village tell the fresh and unforgettable story of America itself.